Washington Square West is home to Philadelphia's "gaybourhood." (Wikipedia/Sbacle)

World’s top ‘gaybourhoods’ 10 destinations for gay & lesbian travel World’s top party cities Top 10 cities of 2008

PHILADELPHIA -- Valerie Safran can still remember when a Red Light District replete with prostitutes and drug dealers occupied what is now this city's Gaybourhood.

That was five years ago before real estate maven Tony Goldman happened on the scene -- the same urban visionary behind the regentrification of Manhattan's SoHo district, South Beach in Miami and Manhattan's Wall St.

Goldman saw a walkable town with nothing to walk to. He set about buying up modest buildings in Center City -- many of them in the 13th and Walnut streets neighbourhood, or what was to become the heart of the Gayborhood. His idea was to clean up the area and to work to connect it to the nearby Avenue of the Arts on Broad St.

"This particular neighbourhood has undergone a dramatic transformation in just five years," says Safran, who along with her partner Marcie Turney own and operate two restaurants and two other businesses, all located along 13th St.

Founded 300 years ago and home to the Liberty Bell, Philly is best known as the birthplace of American independence -- famously referred to as "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

On July 4, 1965, 40 activists held a peaceful gay rights protest in front of the city's Independence Hall -- a protest which is now recognized as the start of the gay civil rights movement in the U.S. A historic blue and yellow marker -- erected on the 40th anniversary in July 2005 -- now stands on the site of those protests.

Today Philly is so welcoming to gay and lesbian travellers one could call it the city of "Brotherly AND Sisterly Love."

Mark Segal, a publisher and gay rights pioneer known for his activism on camera in the '70s with such top TV journalists as Walter Cronkite and Barbara Walters, calls Philly the "second most gay-friendly city in the U.S.," after San Francisco. Gay-friendly events aren't just concentrated in June -- as they are in Toronto -- but are spread throughout the year. There is rarely a month without an event.

The Equality Forum -- billed as the largest national gay and lesbian civil rights forum -- takes place in late April each year. Besides dozens of programs and parties, the week-long forum features SundayOUT! -- a huge street festival.

In early October, Philly marks National Coming Out Day with another street party in the Gayborhood -- known as Outfest. The day-long festival, which my partner and I visited last year, rivals Toronto's PRIDE weekend but is even more expansive with several streets dedicated to bands, displays and booths. This year's event is slated for Oct. 12.

The Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corp. has been selling its gay-friendly appeal worldwide since 2003 with a groundbreaking, award-winning "Get Your History Straight and Your Nightlife Gay" TV and print ad campaign.

"Not one politician -- Democratic or Republican -- complained about it," says Segal, one of the locals featured in the latest incarnation of that campaign.

Tami Sortman, president of the Philadelphia Gay Tourism Caucus, initiated post 9/11 to lure international gay travellers to the city, says they've produced a gay merchant brochure listing hundreds of gay-friendly businesses and hotel staff have been given sensitivity training to ensure they are welcoming to gay couples.

It took two years but Sortman's caucus finally arranged to have signage recently put up to mark each Gayborhood street.

What Safran and Turney -- also featured in the latest tourism campaign -- particularly like about Philly's Gayborhood is that it is a "very small city environment" where people recognize each other from one end of the area to the other.

"That's what makes a community of people in Philly," she told us over Margaritas at Lolita, their B.Y.O.B. eatery serving Turney's "take on modern Mexican" cuisine. "There's a strong (gay) community here because it's not crazy like New York."

"Philly has always been a very out city ... very, very open and very, very friendly ... particularly in the Gayborhood," Sortman adds.

But it's not all gay all the time. All in all, my partner and I had a very gay weekend in Philly last fall but not just in the Gayborhood. We enjoyed sales at Macy's on Market St. After all, what woman can resist buying two already sale-priced pair of shoes to get the third for free? We also did some damage at a new Loehmann's store, one of our favourite discount places to visit when we're in Florida.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art, one of the country's leading museums featuring 200 galleries, was another one of our stops. We took part in informative tours of the city's historic district (including the Liberty Bell Center) and braved the former Eastern State Penitentiary (which hosts a haunted house tour called "Terror Behind the Walls" between late September and early November.)

Between the many fabulous restaurants, the shopping and the historical sites, we encountered a surprisingly walkable city.

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MORE INFORMATION

For details on travel to Greater Philly, visit gophila.com or call toll-free 1-800-537-7676 daily. For gay-specific events, check out gophila.com/gay. For upcoming exhibits at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, see philamuseum.org/exhibitions/upcoming.